Sunday, September 20, 2009

NA Wily Wars Package Art?

Fans will recall that Mega Man: The Wily Wars (a compilation of the first three MM games for the Genesis/MegaDrive) wasn't released in cartridge form in North America; instead, it was an exclusive playable title on Sega Channel, a now defunct gaming-on-demand service for the Genesis. However, a recently discovered package art indicates that at one point, Capcom might have considered a cartridge version for NA:

A muscular blue bomber with a manly, pissed-off face? Yeah, seems like a legitimate early 90's Mega Man box art to me. But, how can we be sure it's official and not fan-art? (after all, the source of the image is DeviantArt)

Have a look at this GamePro scan from July '94. A cropped version of the package art appears alongside an article for the Wily Wars, which almost sounds as if the game was initially headed to cartridge form as opposed to Sega Channel.

14 comments:

That seems pretty official to me. Where the hell did you find it after all this time? Its a pretty awesome box art and it would have been welcome in NA any day. Capcom makes some pretty damn stupid choice, even then. Awesome box art, none the less. Though I think the PAL version looks better than the NA version's art. That is quite a compliment seeing is how they significantly got worse over the years. '^_^

"why the switch?" Because Capcom wanted to support Sega Channel, and decided to make this game an exclusive to the service. In the long run it wasn't the best idea because now the US region copy of the game has been lost forever.

Yeah, it's official. Sega Visions (Sega's version of Nintendo Power) had that same image for "Upcoming titles" back in the day. I'd still have that particular issue if we hadn't lost it in a housefire back in '99.

But yeah, they were intending on releasing it.. I don't know what idiot decided it should be strictly on Sega Channel... Whoever it was was a damned moron.

I'm certain it's official. Early on I believe Sega intended to release a cartridge version of this game in North America (heck, the game was already in English and all they had to do was change the game's region when releasing the cartridge version). However, as some of you have suggested, I think they tried to make an "economical move" and put the game as a "Sega Channel-exclusive" to make Rockman fans support the Sega Channel if they really wanted to get the game.

In the end, those kind of moves backfire, because a lot of people weren't willing to get the Sega Channel for that specific game, but we could go on-and-on about that.

i have the cadrige for mi sega genesis (and i hope is still there ejejej) i bought yhear ago wen i as a kid, wen i foun the cadrige i gona take pictures an send it, and the pakage ius the same in the picture